Rare June snow dusts Park City peaks, forecasters warn of more to come
A June dusting hit Alta, Snowbird and Brighton high country, while forecasters posted fire and freeze alerts across northern Utah.
High peaks around Park City and Summit County woke to a fresh June dusting, with snow coating some of the region’s highest terrain from Alta’s Albion Basin to the top of Mirror Lake Highway. The overnight band of high-mountain snow also frosted the pines near Alta, touched Sugarloaf Peak, Snowbird’s Mineral Basin and the Brighton Crest lift, and left the ridgelines looking more like winter than the last week of June.
The snow was not expected to last long, but it carried immediate meaning for hikers, trail crews and anyone moving into the Wasatch and Uinta high country. The National Weather Service in Salt Lake City forecast snow showers above about 8,500 to 9,000 feet, with a strong cold front pushing daytime highs Sunday to 20 to 25 degrees below normal across northern Utah. That kind of swing can turn a warm valley day into slick, cold, high-country footing in a matter of miles.
The same system kept wildfire concerns in the forecast for lower elevations. As of Monday, June 29, the Salt Lake City forecast office had a Freeze Warning, Red Flag Warning, Wind Advisory, Fire Weather Watch and Air Quality Alert posted, a rare combination that underscored how sharply weather was diverging across Summit County and northern Utah. A cool trough was moving into the region, and forecasters were calling for a chance of high-elevation snow Wednesday and beyond, along with increasing wind and thunderstorms as the trough dropped into the Great Basin.
Park City Mountain puts Park City’s average at nearly 300 inches of snow each winter, a reminder that the area is built around snow even if late-June flakes are unusual.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
